Do Essential Oils Really Have Medicinal Properties?

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It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!

In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

So, no question/request too big or small 😎

❝Do essential oils really have scientific merit?❞

‌Great question! Assuming you mean “…for medicinal purposes” then it really depends on the oil in question.

For example, one can probably buy a big book of essential oils from a New Age store, and a lot of claims for different oils will not have any scientific backing whatsoever.

However! Some definitely do. For example, we wrote a little while back about ginger:

Ginger Does A Lot More Than You Think

Now, the active compound that gives ginger those properties and more is gingerol. Which is usually found as pure ginger oil, in other words, ginger essential oil.

Another essential oil that definitely does have benefits is that of Boswellia serrata, commonly known as frankincense. It can be used in various forms, and the essential oil is one of them; see:

Meanwhile, menthol, the essential oil of peppermint, has its pros and cons:

Peppermint For Digestion & Against Nausea: How Useful Is Peppermint, Really?

And lavender essential oil does really have a sedative effect:

Herbs for Evidence-Based Health & Healing

If you have a different, particular essential oil in mind, let us know, and we can do a deep-dive on it for one of our “Research Review” editions!

A note on safety

Essential oils are pure and undiluted extracts of what’s usually a particularly potent chemical from a plant. Two things to bear in mind about this:

  • Just because a chemical is potent, does not mean it will necessarily help you in a specific way, or indeed at all. On the contrary, many potent chemicals are simply harmful. So, be careful.
  • Essential oils being so strong means that usually only a drop or two is required for effects; consult available literature (or ask us to do that for you!), and employ good safety practices such as:
    • Do not use undiluted essential oils on your skin or internally
    • If you are going to use it internally (diluted, following instructions from a reputable source, and with your doctor’s blessing, please) then test it on your skin first at the same dilution, in case of any adverse reaction.
    • However you are using it, if you have any kind of adverse reaction, stop, and seek medical attention if it’s severe and/or it persists.

Take care!

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  • What’s Your Ikigai?

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    Ikigai: A Closer Look

    We’ve mentioned ikigai from time to time, usually when discussing the characteristics associated with Blue Zone centenarians, for example as number 5 of…

    The Five Pillars Of Longevity

    It’s about finding one’s “purpose”. Not merely a function, but what actually drives you in life. And, if Japanese studies can be extrapolated to the rest of the world, it has a significant and large impact on mortality (other factors being controlled for); not having a sense of ikigai is associated with an approximately 47%* increase in 7-year mortality risk in the categories of cardiovascular disease and external cause mortality:

    Sense of life worth living (ikigai) and mortality in Japan: Ohsaki Study

    *we did a lot of averaging and fuzzy math to get this figure; the link will show you the full stats though!

    In case that huge (n=43,391) study didn’t convince you, here’s another comparably-sized (n=43,117) one that found similarly, albeit framing the numbers the other way around, i.e. a comparable decrease in mortality risk for having a sense of ikigai:

    Associations of ikigai as a positive psychological factor with all-cause mortality and cause-specific mortality among middle-aged and elderly Japanese people

    This study was even longer (12 years rather than 7), so the fact that it found pretty much the same results the 7-year study we cited just before is quite compelling evidence. Again, multivariate hazard ratios were adjusted for age, BMI, drinking and smoking status, physical activity, sleep duration, education, occupation, marital status, perceived mental stress, and medical history—so all these things were effectively controlled for statistically.

    Three kinds of ikigai

    There are three principal kinds of ikigai:

    • Social ikigai: for example, a caring role in the family or community, volunteer work, teaching
    • Asocial ikigai: for example, a solitary practice of self-discipline, spirituality, or study without any particular intent to teach others
    • Antisocial ikigai: for example, a strong desire to outlive an enemy, or to harm a person or group that one hates

    You may be thinking: wait, aren’t those last things bad?

    And… Maybe! But ikigai is not a matter of morality or even about “warm fuzzy feelings”. The fact is, having a sense of purpose increases longevity regardless of moral implications or niceness.

    Nevertheless, for obvious reasons there is a lot more focus on the first two categories (social and asocial), and of those, especially the first category (social), because on a social level, “we all do well when we all do well”.

    We exemplified them above, but they can be defined:

    • Social: working for the betterment of society
    • Asocial: working for the betterment of oneself

    Of course, for many people, the same ikigai may cover both of those—often somebody who excels at something for its own sake and/but shares it with others to enrich their lives also, for example a teacher, an artist, a scientist, etc.

    For it to cover both, however, requires that both parts of it are genuinely part of their feeling of ikigai, and not merely unintended consequences.

    For example, a piano teacher who loves music in general and the piano in particular, and would gladly spend every waking moment studying/practising/performing, but hates having to teach it, but needs to pay the bills so teaches it anyway, cannot be said to be living any kind of social ikigai there, just asocial. And in fact, if teaching the piano is causing them to not have the time or energy to pursue it for its own sake, they might not even be living any ikigai at all.

    One other thing to watch out for

    There is one last stumbling block, which is that while we can find ikigai, we can also lose it! Examples of this may include:

    • A professional whose job is their ikigai, until they face mandatory retirement or are otherwise unable to continue their work (perhaps due to disability, for example)
    • A parent whose full-time-parent role is their ikigai, until their children leave for school, university, life in general
    • A married person whose “devoted spouse” role is their ikigai, until their partner dies

    For this reason, people of any age can have a “crisis of identity” that’s actually more of a “crisis of purpose”.

    There are two ways of handling this:

    1. Have a back-up ikigai ready! For example, if your profession is your ikigai, maybe you have a hobby waiting in the wings, that you can smoothly jump ship to upon retirement.
    2. Embrace the fluidity of life! Sometimes, things don’t happen the way we expect. Sometimes life’s surprises can trip us up; sometimes they can leave us a sobbing wreck. But so long as life continues, there is an opportunity to pick ourselves up and decide where to go from that point. Note that this is not fatalism, by the way, it doesn’t have to be “this bad thing happened so that we could find this good thing, so really it was a good thing all along”. Rather, it can equally readily be “well, we absolutely did not want that bad thing to happen, but since it did, now we shall take it this way from here”.

    For more on developing/maintaining psychological resilience in the face of life’s less welcome adversities, see:

    Psychological Resilience Training

    …and:

    Putting The Abs Into Absurdity ← do not underestimate the power of this one

    Take care!

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  • Horse Sedative Use Among Humans Spreads in Deadly Mixture of ‘Tranq’ and Fentanyl

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    TREASURE ISLAND, Fla. — Andrew McClave Jr. loved to lift weights. The 6-foot-4-inch bartender resembled a bodybuilder and once posed for a photo flexing his muscles with former pro wrestler Hulk Hogan.

    “He was extremely dedicated to it,” said his father, Andrew McClave Sr., “to the point where it was almost like he missed his medication if he didn’t go.”

    But the hobby took its toll. According to a police report, a friend told the Treasure Island Police Department that McClave, 36, suffered from back problems and took unprescribed pills to reduce the pain.

    In late 2022, the friend discovered McClave in bed. He had no pulse. A medical examiner determined he had a fatal amount of fentanyl, cocaine, and xylazine, a veterinary tranquilizer used to sedate horses, in his system, an autopsy report said. Heart disease was listed as a contributing factor.

    McClave is among more than 260 people across Florida who died in one year from accidental overdoses involving xylazine, according to a Tampa Bay Times analysis of medical examiner data from 2022, the first year state officials began tracking the substance. Numbers for 2023 haven’t been published.

    The death toll reflects xylazine’s spread into the nation’s illicit drug supply. Federal regulators approved the tranquilizer for animals in the early 1970s and it’s used to sedate horses for procedures like oral exams and colic treatment, said Todd Holbrook, an equine medicine specialist at the University of Florida. Reports of people using xylazine emerged in Philadelphia, then the drug spread south and west.

    What’s not clear is exactly what role the sedative plays in overdose deaths, because the Florida data shows no one fatally overdosed on xylazine alone. The painkiller fentanyl was partly to blame in all but two cases in which the veterinary drug was included as a cause of death, according to the Times analysis. Cocaine or alcohol played roles in the cases in which fentanyl was not involved.

    Fentanyl is generally the “800-pound gorilla,” according to Lewis Nelson, chair of the emergency medicine department at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, and xylazine may increase the risk of overdose, though not substantially.

    But xylazine appears to complicate the response to opioid overdoses when they do happen and makes it harder to save people. Xylazine can slow breathing to dangerous levels, according to federal health officials, and it doesn’t respond to the overdose reversal drug naloxone, often known by the brand name Narcan. Part of the problem is that many people may not know they are taking the horse tranquilizer when they use other drugs, so they aren’t aware of the additional risks.

    Lawmakers in Tallahassee made xylazine a Schedule 1 drug like heroin or ecstasy in 2016, and several other states including Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia have taken action to classify it as a scheduled substance, too. But it’s not prohibited at the federal level. Legislation pending in Congress would criminalize illicit xylazine use nationwide.

    The White House in April designated the combination of fentanyl and xylazine, often called “tranq dope,” as an emerging drug threat. A study of 20 states and Washington, D.C., found that overdose deaths attributed to both illicit fentanyl and xylazine exploded from January 2019 to June 2022, jumping from 12 a month to 188.

    “We really need to continue to be proactive,” said Amanda Bonham-Lovett, program director of a syringe exchange in St. Petersburg, “and not wait until this is a bigger issue.”

    ‘A Good Business Model’

    There are few definitive answers about why xylazine use has spread — and its impact on people who consume it.

    The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in September said the tranquilizer is entering the country in several ways, including from China and in fentanyl brought across the southwestern border. The Florida attorney general’s office is prosecuting an Orange County drug trafficking case that involves xylazine from a New Jersey supplier.

    Bonham-Lovett, who runs IDEA Exchange Pinellas, the county’s anonymous needle exchange, said some local residents who use drugs are not seeking out xylazine — and don’t know they’re consuming it.

    One theory is that dealers are mixing xylazine into fentanyl because it’s cheap and also affects the brain, Nelson said.

    “It’s conceivable that if you add a psychoactive agent to the fentanyl, you can put less fentanyl in and still get the same kick,” he said. “It’s a good business model.”

    In Florida, men accounted for three-quarters of fatal overdoses involving xylazine, according to the Times analysis. Almost 80% of those who died were white. The median age was 42.

    Counties on Florida’s eastern coast saw the highest death tolls. Duval County topped the list with 46 overdoses. Tampa Bay recorded 19 fatalities.

    Cocaine was also a cause in more than 80 cases, including McClave’s, the Times found. The DEA in 2018 warned of cocaine laced with fentanyl in Florida.

    In McClave’s case, Treasure Island police found what appeared to be marijuana and a small plastic bag with white residue in his room, according to a police report. His family still questions how he took the powerful drugs and is grappling with his death.

    He was an avid fisherman, catching snook and grouper in the Gulf of Mexico, said his sister, Ashley McClave. He dreamed of being a charter boat captain.

    “I feel like I’ve lost everything,” his sister said. “My son won’t be able to learn how to fish from his uncle.”

    Mysterious Wounds

    Another vexing challenge for health officials is the link between chronic xylazine use and open wounds.

    The wounds are showing up across Tampa Bay, needle exchange leaders said. The telltale sign is blackened, crusty tissue, Bonham-Lovett said. Though the injuries may start small — the size of a dime — they can grow and “take over someone’s whole limb,” she said.

    Even those who snort fentanyl, instead of injecting it, can develop them. The phenomenon is unexplained, Nelson said, and is not seen in animals.

    IDEA Exchange Pinellas has recorded at least 10 cases since opening last February, Bonham-Lovett said, and has a successful treatment plan. Staffers wash the wounds with soap and water, then dress them.

    One person required hospitalization partly due to xylazine’s effects, Bonham-Lovett said. A 31-year-old St. Petersburg woman, who asked not to be named due to concerns over her safety and the stigma of drug use, said she was admitted to St. Anthony’s Hospital in 2023. The woman, who said she uses fentanyl daily, had a years-long staph infection resistant to some antibiotics, and a wound recently spread across half her thigh.

    The woman hadn’t heard of xylazine until IDEA Exchange Pinellas told her about the drug. She’s thankful she found out in time to get care.

    “I probably would have lost my leg,” she said.

    This article was produced in partnership with the Tampa Bay Times.

    KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

    Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.

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  • The Little-Known Truth…

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    Myth-Buster, Myth-Buster, Bust Us A Myth (or three!)

    Let’s can this myth for good

    People think of “canned foods” as meaning “processed foods” and therefore bad. But the reality is it’s all dependent on what’s in the can (check the ingredients!). And as for nutrients?

    Many canned fruits and vegetables contain more nutrients than fresh ones! This is because the way they’ve been stored preserves them better. For example:

    • Canned tomatoes contain more bioavailable lycopene than fresh
    • Canned spinach contains more bioavailable carotene than fresh
    • Canned corn contains more bioavailable lutein than fresh
    • The list goes on, but you get the idea!

    Don’t Want To Take Our Word For It? Read The Scientific Paper Here!

    Gaslight, Gymkeep, Girl-loss?

    Many women and girls avoid doing weight-training as part of their exercise—or use only the smallest weights—to avoid “bulking up” and “looking like a man”.

    Many men, meanwhile, wish it were that easy to bulk up!

    The reality is that nobody, unless you have very rare genes, packs on a lot of muscle by accident. Even with the genes for it, it won’t happen unless you’re also eating for it!

    Resistance-based strength training (such as lifting weights), is a great way for most people to look after an important part of their long-term health: bone density!

    You can’t have strong muscles on weak bones, so strengthening the muscles cues the body to strengthen the bones. In short, your strength-training at age 45 or 55 (or earlier) could be what helps you avoid a broken hip at 65 or 75.

    We’re Not Kidding, It Really Is That Important (Read The Study Here)!

    Something doesn’t smell right about this

    There’s been a big backlash against anti-perspirants and deodorants. The popular argument is that the aluminium in them causes cancer.

    This led to many people buying “deodo-rocks”, crystal rocks that can be run under water and then rubbed on the armpits to deodorize “naturally”. But, those crystal rocks are actually alum crystals (guess what they contain…).

    The belief that deodorants cause cancer came from studies done by applying deodorant to cells (like the canine kidney cells in this study) in petri dishes. So, assuming you don’t cut out your kidney and then spray it directly with the deodorant, the jury is still out!

    A more recent systematic review sorted out quite clearly the ways in which aluminium was, or was not, harmful, and said:

    ❝Neither is there clear evidence to show use of Al-containing underarm antiperspirants or cosmetics increases the risk of Alzheimer’s Disease or breast cancer. Metallic Al, its oxides, and common Al salts have not been shown to be either genotoxic or carcinogenic.❞

    Critical Reviews in Toxicology

    …but also says that you should avoid eating aluminium while pregnant or breastfeeding. We hope you can resist the urge.

    See The Summary For Yourself Here!

    (actually the whole article is there, but we know you value condensed knowledge, so: the abstract at the top will probably tell you all you want to know!)

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  • The Medicinal Properties Of Bay Leaves

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    The humble bay leaf has more uses than just culinary!

    How about for hair growth?

    Popularly recommended on social media with the promise of long and glowing hair… Guess how many scientific studies back up this claim!

    If you guessed zero, you guessed correctly. At least, we were not able to find any. In fact, the only paper on the entirety of PubMed (a large online database of available scientific literature from most, if not all, reputable scientific journals) to return a hit for the search string “bay leaf hair growth” was this one:

    Suppression of Propionibacterium acnes-Induced Skin Inflammation by Laurus nobilis Extract and Its Major Constituent Eucalyptol

    You may notice that that has nothing to do with hair growth, and rather returned the hit because the acne bacteria are known to “proliferate within sebum-blocked skin hair follicles”.

    So let’s talk about that instead:

    Against acne & skin inflammation

    Well, for that, it works! The research that we mentioned above concluded that:

    ❝LNE significantly suppressed the expression of P. acnes-mediated proinflammatory cytokines, such as IL-1β, IL-6, and NLRP3. We also found that LNE inhibited the inflammatory transcription factor NF-κB in response to P. acnes. In addition, eucalyptol, which is the main constituent of LNE, consistently inhibited P. acnes-induced inflammatory signaling pathways. Moreover, LNE significantly ameliorated P. acnes-induced inflammation in a mouse model of acne. We suggest for the first time that LNE hold therapeutic value for the improvement of P. acnes-induced skin inflammation.❞

    LNE = Laurus nobilis extract, i.e. bay leaf extract

    Now, that’s all about acne-induced skin inflammation, but what about other kinds?

    Against inflammation in general

    Bay leaves have an abundance of antioxidant polyphenols, and what’s good against oxidation is good against inflammation. For example:

    Laurus nobilis leaf extract controls inflammation by suppressing NLRP3 inflammasome activation

    That anti-inflammatory action is more than skin-deep though, because…

    Against IBD / ulcerative colitis

    It’s good for the gut, too, for example in this study (with mice, but the bacteria affected are the same as we have), which found:

    ❝…bay leaves showed the best treatment effects on gut microbiota compositions; promoting the growth of Bifidobacteria and Lactobacillus in addition to producing high butyric acid levels. Meanwhile, the number of Clostridium and sulfate-reducing bacteria was significantly reduced. Conclusively, consuming bay leaves brought significant colon health benefits other than stimulating appetite for a better taste.❞

    Read in full: Anti‐inflammatory effects of bay laurel (Laurus nobilis L.) towards the gut microbiome in dextran sodium sulfate induced colitis animal models

    Note that all of those gut-related changes are beneficial to us, increasing things that are best increased, and reducing things that are best reduced.

    Against diabetes

    It’s good for the blood—and for the heart, but more on that later. First, about diabetes:

    ❝All three levels of bay leaves reduced serum glucose with significant decreases ranging from 21 to 26% after 30 d.

    Total cholesterol decreased, 20 to 24%, after 30 days with larger decreases in low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol of 32 to 40%. High density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol increased 29 and 20% in the groups receiving 1 and 2 g of bay leaves, respectively. Triglycerides also decreased 34 and 25% in groups consuming 1 and 2 g of bay leaves, respectively, after 30 d. There were no significant changes in the placebo group.

    In summary, this study demonstrates that consumption of bay leaves, 1 to 3 g/d for 30 days, decreases risk factors for diabetes and cardiovascular diseases and suggests that bay leaves may be beneficial for people with type 2 diabetes.❞

    Again, all those changes are good:

    Bay Leaves Improve Glucose and Lipid Profile of People with Type 2 Diabetes

    Good for the heart

    This one’s quite straight forward. Bay leaf tea is indeed good for the heart,

    Of course, even that latter is also good for the heart literally, just, indirectly, by reducing anxiety and stress, thus indirectly benefiting the heart itself.

    But even before that, it’s already very directly beneficial to cardiovascular health, per its significant improvements to the lipid profile.

    Anything else?

    So much else, but there’s only so much we can feature in one day, so if you’d like to learn more, we recommend this very comprehensive paper:

    Chromatography analysis, in light of vitro antioxidant, antidiabetic, antiobesity, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, anticancer, and three-dimensional cancer spheroids’ formation blocking activities of Laurus nobilis aromatic oil from Palestine

    …which discusses many benefits in considerable detail, including…

    ❝The LN leaves have various biological activities, such as antioxidant, wound healing, antibacterial, analgesic, and anti-inflammatory activities. However, oxidative stress, cancer, diabetes, microbial infections, and inflammatory diseases are closely linked. The objective of this research is to characterize Laurus nobilis (LN) aromatic oil (AO) and evaluate its antioxidant, antidiabetic, antiobesity, antimicrobial, and antimutagenic bioactivities.

    The plant AO showed potent antioxidant activity (IC50 = 2.2 ± 1.38) and has moderate anti-amylase (IC50 = 60.25 ± 1.25), anti-glucosidase (IC50 = 131.82 ± 0.1), and antilipase (IC50 = 83.17 ± 0.06) activities.

    Moreover, LNAO showed potent antimicrobial activity against Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumonia, Proteus vulgaris (MICs = 1.56 µg/mL), methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) (MIC = 3.125 µg/mL) and Candida albicans (MIC = 0.195 µg/mL). The cytotoxicity results demonstrated that at a concentration of 1 mg/mL, LNAO has potent breast cancer (MCF-7), and hepatocellular carcinoma (Hep 3B) cancer cells inhibitory activities of 98% and 95%, respectively.

    Importantly, we are the first to show that LNAO significantly hinders hepatocellular carcinoma spheroids’ formation capacity in a 3D model.

    These results show that LNAO is a promising natural source with powerful antioxidant, antidiabetic, anticancer, and antimicrobial activities that could be exploited in the future to treat a variety of diseases.❞

    Want to try some?

    We don’t sell it, but you can buy leaves from your local supermarket and make bay leaf tea, or alternatively, if you prefer essential oil form, here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon 😎

    Enjoy!

    Don’t Forget…

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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  • Skin Care Down There (Incl. Butt Acne, Hyperpigmentation, & More)

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Dr. Sam Ellis, dermatologist, gives us the low-down:

    Where the sun don’t shine

    Common complaints and remedies that Dr. Ellis covers in this video include:

    • Butt acne/folliculitis: most butt breakouts are actually folliculitis, not traditional acne. Folliculitis is caused by friction, sitting for long periods, or wearing tight clothes. Solutions include antimicrobial washes like benzoyl peroxide and changing sitting habits (i.e. to sit less)
    • Keratosis pilaris: rough bumps around hair follicles can appear on the butt, often confused with acne.
    • Boils and abscesses: painful, large lumps; these need medical attention for drainage.
    • Hidradenitis suppurativa: recurrent painful cysts and boils in skin creases, often in the groin and buttocks. These require medical intervention and treatment.
    • Ingrown hairs: are common in people who shave or wax. Treat with warm compresses and gentle exfoliants.
    • Hyperpigmentation: is often caused by hormonal changes, friction, or other irritation. Laser hair removal and gentle chemical exfoliants can help.

    In the event that the sun does, in fact, shine on your genitals (for example you sunbathe nude and have little or no pubic hair), then sun protection is essential to prevent further darkening (and also, incidentally, reduce the risk of cancer).

    For more on all of this, plus a general introduction to skincare in the bikini zone (i.e. if everything’s fine there right now and you’d like to keep it that way), enjoy:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    The Evidence-Based Skincare That Beats Product-Specific Hype

    Take care!

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  • Elderhood – by Dr. Louise Aronson

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    Where does “middle age” end, and “old age” begin? By the United States’ CDC’s categorization, human life involves:

    • 17 stages of childhood, deemed 0–18
    • 5 stages of adulthood, deemed 18–60
    • 1 stage of elderhood, deemed 60+

    Isn’t there something missing here? Do we just fall off some sort of conveyor belt on our sixtieth birthdays, into one big bucket marked “old”?

    Yesterday you were 59 and enjoying your middle age; today you have, apparently, the same medical factors and care needs as a 114-year-old.

    Dr. Louise Aronson, a geriatrician, notes however that medical science tends to underestimate the differences found in more advanced old age, and underresearch them. That elders consume half of a country’s medicines, but are not required to be included in clinical trials. That side effects not only are often different than for younger adults, but also can cause symptoms that are then dismissed as “Oh she’s just old”.

    She explores, mostly through personal career anecdotes, the well-intentioned disregard that is frequently given by the medical profession, and—importantly—how we might overcome that, as individuals and as a society.

    Bottom line: if you are over the age of 60, love someone over the age of 60, this is a book for you. Similarly if you and/or they plan to live past the age of 60, this is also a book for you.

    Click here to check out Elderhood, and empower yours!

    Don’t Forget…

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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